Recently, I reached out to a friend to see if they wanted to see the second Wicked film, only to realise the last time I’d seen them had been a full year – when we went to the first Wicked film. Oops. For a musical about friendship, it’s really lacking a number where Elphaba and Glinda try to schedule a lunch four months in advance.
I wish this was a one-off blip in my regimented friendship schedule, but all through 2025 I played the world’s slowest game of message tennis. I’d invite a pal for dinner, only for the world to turn, the seasons pass, grey hairs gather at my temples, before a date was finally locked in.
This sentiment seems to be common among my circle. In fact the latest Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey revealed a long-term decline in social connectedness that has only worsened since the pandemic, with many Australians seeing a decline in friendships, particularly men aged 24–44 and women aged 15–24. In the horrible pyramid of late-capitalism needs, maintaining and valuing your friendships often falls depressingly low beneath “having a job and paying rent”. If I had a nickel every time I’ve had to let friends down the past year because I’ve been doing job interviews or the interminable tasks that seem to go with them, I’d have so many that I wouldn’t have to keep applying for jobs.
But the shining nerdy light in all this is my regular Dungeons and Dragons game with a group of my pals, which provides something I thought I’d never need: the comforting schedule of organised fun. Every month, well in advance, we set our next game. It’s regular, it’s reliable and, as I’ve found this past year, deeply necessary.
We’ve become a society that relies on organised fun to fulfil basic societal needs: we’re going on “run clubs” so we can avoid the scourge of dating apps; we’re going to book clubs to force us to read books instead of stare at our phones; and I pretend to be an elf warlock divorcee.
A game of D&D focuses on the concept of an “adventuring party”. This is a group of heroes who are knitted closer through fantasy conflict in imagined lands. It’s almost like it was designed in a lab to make the players feel closer as a result. You are still connected by the events your characters have gone through, even if you aren’t actually suffering from werewolf bites.
I’ve always been someone against the concept of forced fun. When I was young, I loved the spontaneity of grabbing friends for dinner or to see a show, and spurned more elaborate events such as board game nights or playing in a sports team. In a previous job, I would schedule my annual leave for every corporate team-building event – – I didn’t want to play lawn bowls with the head of sales. I wanted to go home and organise my spice rack.
So it has been strange to discover that some of the most contrived fun out there not only involves deep creative investment, but an investment of precious time, and an entire grab bag of geeky aesthetic. I now travel to my friend’s house with a bag of dice and other strange accoutrements that, in an 80s teen film, would lead to me being thrown into a dumpster. I love it.
Not only is the forced, routine connection with my beloved friends something I look forward to every month, I have a theory that Dungeons and Dragons are also deeply comforting in a way that the run clubs and book clubs and other social events aren’t.
In D&D, me and my friends get to take a break from the harsh realities of our lives. In most sessions, we spend an hour fannying around, making food, drinking tea and updating everyone on our job nemesis, financial woes, the latest housemate drama. My elf doesn’t live in a world with rising fascism, it lives in a world where a creature made entirely of eyeballs is its biggest concern, and that’s very comforting. Not only is a game of D&D an enforced type of connection, it’s also a way of socialising that enforces fun and whimsy and play.
My theory is that sometimes, upsettingly, trying to maintain a social calendar and prioritise your friends in your life does become yet another job. And when you’re tired and stressed and burnt out by all our other things, it’s easy for friendship to become a chore.
It’s very difficult to bring the stresses and anxieties of your life into a make-believe world where you are adventuring with your very silly friends, which I think is why D&D has become so incredibly popular. The capacity to choose to spend your time being silly and creative diminishes as we get older, which is why I delight in carving out a day every month to do it. Having a dedicated monthly escapism day with your friends is the opposite of a chore, and might even be some kind of beneficial release valve that helps you navigate the rest of your responsibilities too. Or maybe it’s just fun and we shouldn’t think too deeply about it.
• Patrick Lenton is a writer. His latest novel is titled In Spite of You
